What You Can't Rise Above
by SavvyIthny
Summary: Eight days after "The Incident," a file appears in Kensi's inbox. It's a paper file, nondescript except for the large red "Confidential" stamp across the front. And across the back. And the slightly heavier-than-usual cardstock that indicates the folder probably has embedded RFID for security. Kensi, coping with the events of "Descent/Ascension." Or trying to.


**Title: ****What you Can't Rise Above**

**Rating: PG13 for trauma, aftermath  
>Character(s): Kensi, Callen, Hetty, Julia, Deeks.<br>Disclaimer: Not mine. My Deeks would have been _much_ scarier to Monica in "Parley."  
>Summary: Kensi, coping with the events of "DescentAscension." Or trying to.**

Eight days after "The Incident," a file appears in Kensi's inbox.

It's a paper file, nondescript except for the large red "Confidential" stamp across the front. And across the back. And the slightly heavier-than-usual cardstock that indicates the folder probably has embedded RFID for security.

Paperclipped to the front is a paper form, the case number pre-filled at the top of it. Over it is a handwritten note in Hetty's script: "For completion of your after-action reports."

She recognizes the case number and her stomach churns.

Everything inside has been printed from the secure electronic file system onto reflective paper that resists photocopying, and she's pretty sure each page has a unique UV watermark. She's being given limited access; the ability to share this file with anyone outside her physical workplace is far, far above her pay grade.

Inside are statements by crime scene technicians, forensic DNA reports, fingerprints and ballistics results. Three witness interviews are transcribed, typed in dialog format to fully capture details. There are medical records and several autopsy reports.

And there are _pictures_.

Kensi reads the entire file, carefully, with an investigator's eye. She flips through the pictures, one after the other.

And then she goes to the women's restroom and throws up.

Callen is waiting just outside the restroom door when she comes out. He hands her a bottle of water and pushes the door of the gun range open, indicating with a tilt of his head that she should enter. When the door closes, he turns to her.

"Granger said 'pretty brutal.' he says. "That really doesn't begin to cover it." His look is questioning, inviting her to explain why she didn't tell him exactly what brutality Granger had glossed over.

"I don't even want to think about what kinds of things Granger has seen, or been part of, if that rates 'pretty brutal'," she tells Callen. "I think he knew as soon as he saw Deeks what they'd done to him."

"You _didn't_?" Callen sounds genuinely surprised.

She takes a deep breath. "G, I've _seen_ people take beatings. I've seen Deeks take a fist to the face. I saw you after you got worked over by Vizieri. After seeing what Sidorov and his people did to those sleeper agents to find those nukes in the first place?"

She stops, remembers to breathe, to slow the pace of the words tumbling out. "I remember thinking 'Thank God, they haven't done much to him yet.' It looked like they'd roughed him up when they captured him. It wasn't until he opened his mouth for the paramedics that I realized..."

"Oh, Kensi." It comes out soft, and G is never touchy-feely with her, and it makes her feel like she's going to start crying, so she clears her throat and continues.

"While I was setting the squibs, I could feel his heart racing while I was sticking them on his shirt. I remember thinking that yeah, it was going to be scary to stay and sell Michelle's cover, but that he was, you know? _Being Deeks about it_. Playing up the 'oh i'm so hurt now, ow ow' thing, like he always does. Except it wasn't, and I knew that, and I pretended I didn't."

"Kens, we had to do it. He _understood_ that. He's done dangerous undercovers for _years_. Sam's statement says he played it perfectly."

"Yeah, maybe. But it doesn't change that I looked him in the eye when he begged me to let him out of that chair, I watched him drooling and spitting blood, and I told him he had to _stay_ to face _more_ _torture_. And some part of me thought he was being _dramatic_ about it."

Callen is silent. Kensi wonders if he's thinking about his own partner's raw, blistered wrists and ankles.

She looks at the floor as she says, softly, "Its just. _Teeth_, Callen? Why did it have to be teeth?

She dreams of kissing him, tastes coffee and the mint and honey of his lips, and then tastes warm metal, coppery across her tongue. He pulls back and his chin is painted dark with blood and her own tongue is coated, and she feels her own teeth crumbling into gravelly crumbs until she wakes up panting "it's not real, its not real, its not real" to herself.

She hasn't seen her partner in nearly a week.

The day after The Incident, Nell met her at her desk with the news that Deeks was on medical leave. She wasn't surprised; she still wasn't sure how either Deeks or Sam had managed to get out of their beds long enough to chase Sidorov, let alone to let Callen drag their weary, damaged bodies out for drinks afterwards.

She _had_ been surprised when Hetty hailed her in the armory and told her that her assignment for the next day was to drive her partner to San Diego. Hetty explained that strings had been pulled to get Deeks an appointment with the military's top reconstructive dentist, a Navy veteran who specialized in rebuilding faces torn apart by IEDs and smashed with rifle butts.

She had arrived at his apartment promptly the next morning, unsure of what she'd find. Her partner's jaw was much more swollen than it had been when she last saw him. Dark bruises were visible through the scruff on his cheeks; some were finger shaped. She could see, there, where large hands had gripped and squeezed and _forced_.

He had been ready and waiting for her, dressed in soft black sweats gone dark grey from much washing. When she came in through the unlocked door, he stood up from the sofa and went into the kitchen, returning with a bottle of water and a handful of pills.

He didn't meet her eyes, but gestured at his face as he mumbled, "They told me to take these before we go." He could barely open his mouth, but he dropped them in and chased them down and recapped the water bottle. He gestured toward the door with his shoulder, then paused and went back to grab the pill bottles off the counter. She could see his knuckles were swollen, too, and he had fumbled with the containers until she'd told him, "Here, let me," and she picked up his bag from the coffee table, indicating he should drop them in. He'd paused, looked up at her, briefly (and for the first time, she realized), and then done so. She'd carried his bag for him, out the door and into the sunlight.

In the parking lot outside his building, he'd looked at her car and muttered "Think I'm gonna lie down," and crawled into the back seat. By the time they hit the freeway, he was already asleep, deeply and boneless-limp.

He was so far under that he didn't wake when she exited and slowed to crawl through surface streets or even when she pulled to a stop in the drop-off lane of the VA hospital. She'd turned off the car, and then, curious, picked up his bag from the seat next to her and looked at the pill bottles. They'd given him both a fast-acting and a slower-release anti-anxiety drug, in addition to a powerful painkiller; her law-enforcement brain kicked in with an estimate of the street value of the three bottles she was now carrying.

He woke up when she opened the back door and put a hand on his shoulder, but did not speak, and didn't object when she hailed an orderly with a wheelchair and deposited him into it to sit and wait while she found a parking spot.

The person at the main reception desk had their names and more instructions, because when she wheeled her partner up, another orderly appeared and they were quickly escorted down a carpeted, softly-lit hall toward the least-institutional waiting room she had ever seen in a VA facility. In surprisingly short order, the dentist introduced herself, explaining that she had already received a full medical history. While the nurse pushed Deeks' chair through the next door, into what looked like another waiting room, the doctor spoke in a low voice to Kensi.

"With cases like this, we start the anesthesia before we even begin the examination, to avoid being associated with the people who did the damage in the first place. It will be a few hours, so if you give your number to the receptionist, you don't have to wait here. We'll text or call when its time to come back for him."

She didn't have anyplace to go, but the thought of only being a door or two away from whatever they were going to have to do to her partner made her shiver. Sitting in that soft, faux-grandmotherly waiting area with the possibility of hearing any part of the procedure was absolutely not an option, even if pacing circles around the atrium garden was not an ideal alternative.

She had made it through nearly half the bad novel she found in the gift shop before her phone buzzed with the call to return. She found her partner sitting up in a recliner in yet another nonthreatening waiting room. The dentist herself went over the aftercare instructions, addressing Deeks but clearly expanding the information to include Kensi. "He's unlikely to remember this part," a technician said from behind her, handing her a folder. "This is all his printed instructions." Then there was a bag, with "And here are his medications. There's a one-week supply, and his followup visit is all set too."

The orderly shifted Deeks to a wheelchair again, pushed him back down the hall and out the doors onto the sidewalk.

"You okay here while I get the car?" she asked. He'd continued to stare at his knees, but nodded an affirmative.

"We'll be right here," the orderly said. "I got him."

When she pulled up, the orderly prevented her partner from crawling back into the back seat. "Can't lie flat," he said, "And the front seat will recline to the right angle." Together, she and the man bundled Deeks into the car and strapped him in. She offered her hand to the other man in thanks.

"No problem, ma'am," he said. "It's a privilege."

She noticed, then, the scars along the man's jaw.

"People here helped me when I came home. Being assigned here gave me a chance to give back."

The drive home had been equally silent, though she wasn't sure he'd been asleep. He had stumbled into his apartment and collapsed silently onto his couch. She had left the information and pill bottles on the kitchen counter, had stood in the doorway looking down at him, had finally mumbled something about calling later, and had retreated to the car.

She has not seen him since. He has not answered his phone or responded to her text.

She completes her after-action report. She types the sentence _Agent S. Hanna and LAPD Detective Deeks were located in an auto body shop off of Calvados Ave. Upon our arrival, we assessed their condition and determined that the plan to re-establish Agent M. Hanna's cover could proceed. _

She does not type _Detective Deeks begged me to free him. _She does not type _I left the person I am closest to in the world to face torture._ She does not type _You could smell the fear in the room, which always thought was a figure of speech but turns out to be true. _

She types _Detective Deeks joined us in pursuit of Isaak Sidorov and discharged his weapon in defense of Agent Hanna._

She does not type _He looked lost and hurt and i didn't touch him because I was afraid if I did I would never let him go again._

She puts her completed report in Hetty's inbasket on top of the confidential case file.

The day before the next scheduled procedure, Eric comes by to tell her she doesn't need to bother, he is going to drive her partner down to San Diego.

Through the long summer of repeated visits to doctor and dentist, Deeks manages to never have the same person drive him twice. No one else even sees the inside of his apartment; they each report in turn that he was waiting for them outside when they pulled into the parking lot.

She takes vacation time, schedules some of her agency-approved mandatory training. She finds a new gym that offers classes in a martial art she's not yet tried and concentrates on teaching her body the rhythms of a new set of programmed moves. She flies to North Carolina to visit a friend from college who is working there and she spends a lot of money and drinks a lot too much.

Her friend takes her out to a club, and she throws herself into the dancing, losing herself in the music and the crowd. The man who approaches her and begins to dance alongside her is short, broad-shouldered, muscular, and she shivers with anticipation as he takes her hand and pulls her closer to join the rhythm he's setting. Until he runs a hand up her shoulder to her cheek and tries to pull her face towards his, and the hair stands up on her arms in prickles - not the good kind - and and she lashes out. She slaps his hand away and kicks at him, tripping him so that he sprawls across the floor and his friends move to stand behind him and the bouncers are alerting and she drops to a stance that so clearly broadcasts her training that he's backing away with his hands up. Her friend pulls her backwards, though the crowd and out the door into the sticky night air.

This friend thinks she works for a forensics lab in the valley; at the cafe down the street she asks if Kensi has seen her company's EAP after the "difficult case " she was involved with in the spring.

Kensi lies and says "of course," and even shows her friend the appointment card in her purse. She doesn't say that she never attended the appointment.

On her return to LA and to work, Hetty greets her quietly and commends her training scores.

She checks in with Nell and Eric, drops off the paperwork to be reimbursed for the training portion of her trip and returns to her desk. She sits, trying not to stare at the two empty desks across from hers. She rearranges her pencils, sorts through her inbox, stares at her stapler for several minutes, and then gets up and walks back to Hetty's office and sits down to bring their eyes to the same level.

She tries to ask her question casually. "So, is there any word on when .. on when they'll be back?" She makes her gesture take in the entire desk area, indicating both her missing partner and his neighbor. "Have you heard _anything_?"

Hetty purses her lips, shakes her head slightly. "I have had no formal notification as to when Agent Hanna and Detective Deeks will return to active duty."

"Well, but have you spoken to them?"

Another Hetty-grimace. "Michelle tells me that Sam is recovering at home and enjoying family time. I received paperwork from the VA hospital indicating that the expected recovery time from Mr. Deeks' rehabilitation program will mean he's unlikely to return until after the end of August."

"Oh." Kensi winces a bit at her own pathos. "But they're coming back? I mean, when they're ready?"

"I have not been informed otherwise," Hetty tells her. "I see no reason why either of them wouldn't. They're professionals, they'll take the time they need."

Kensi feels her face heating. "You don't think that … having had that happen .. they might not want to come back?"

"Miss Blye," Hetty begins, and then sighs. "In our line of work, these things do happen. Despite all our best efforts, sometimes people get hurt."

She can feel her pulse pounding in her neck, and she suppresses the urge to shout. Instead, she sets her jaw firmly and mutters, "And sometimes we _cause_ people to get hurt."

"Part of my job is sending people into dangerous and unpleasant places, Kensi," Hetty says. "I sit in this chair, behind this desk, and I balance the lives of my agents against the lives of dozens or even hundreds of others."

Her chest is tight with the effort of keeping herself still. She wonders how Hetty can speak so calmly about The Incident. How do you become someone who shows so little emotion as you commit someone else to pain or death?

When did she become someone who could do it, too?

Through the roaring of her pulse in her ears, she realizes Hetty is speaking again.

"Miss Blye, you cannot blame yourself for what happened to Mr. Hanna and Mr. Deeks. You followed protocols that unfortunately failed, and you followed my orders and those of Assistant DIrector Granger."

"Yeah, well, 'I was only following orders' isn't generally an acceptable defense," she says, turning to walk away.

Hetty calls after her, "Miss Blye, whoever is at fault for your partner's misfortune, he's going to need your support."

Kensi ignores her supervisor's parting words and returns to her desk. She still feels a ripple of energy across her skin, and finds she can't sit down and concentrate on her papers. She gets up instead and paces a circle around the office area - past her partner's desk, through the seating area, and back again to her own desk. She circles again, and again, looking down at her feet, clenching and unclenching her hands to release their tension.

As she passes Deeks' desk for the third time, she notices something on the floor under his chair. She stoops, looks, and realizes its the clattering wind-up teeth Sam threw at him the evening after the Incident, when he interrupted the packing of boxes and confessing of ... whatever was being confessed.

She recognizes that the gesture from Sam was conciliatory rather than a taunt. She's worked in law enforcement for her entire adult life, and she's more than familiar with the dark humor cops - and agents - use to deal with the horrors they face on the job. She had overheard some of the jokes about Russian dentistry being made around the Mission in the aftermath of The Incident (there had also been some truly memorable wordplay with "hand job.") She realizes that she hasn't heard any new ones since returning to the office.

She uses her toe to kick the teeth out into the walkway and stoops to pick them up. She holds them for a moment, looking at them as her partner had done, weeks ago.

And then she drops them again, into the trash can next to Callen's desk.

In her dreams, she shouts at him, accuses him of never saying what he means. He follows her as she turns away, he grabs her shoulder to get her attention, but when she turns back and looks up at him, he's staring past her, over her shoulder into the distance, a gobbet of blood hanging from a strand of mucousy drool over his lip. Then she's pulled backwards, away from him, yelling his name, and he never once looks her in the eye.

She texts him, twice — stupid, foolish things, under the circumstances. "How's it going?" and "Feel like doing something?" There's no reply.

Her mom calls and invites her to dinner. She ignores the voicemail, and the text, and finally sends an excuse. She's busy with work, she tells her mother. Her partner's on leave, she says, and so she's buried in paperwork.

But she's not really all that busy. She suspects some of their caseload is being channelled elsewhere - to the second shift, to agents based out of San Diego and San Francisco and further afield. She wonders if the LAPD is getting the usual uptick in gang crime that follows the death of a major operator, if the syndicates are rearranging themselves around the spaces left by Sidarov and Vizeri and so many of their lieutenants.

Normally, she'd know because her partner would tell her. "Shit rolls downhill," he would say, after taking a call from Bates. "They want to know if the feds plan to help deal with the mess the feds made," he would say. But no one is liaising right now.

Nell might know, but Nell isn't really talking to her after being stood up for the second time. Apparently, Kensi had agreed to come out for karaoke night, but she doesn't remember doing so. She also doesn't remember writing the two reports that are back on her desk, with a note from Hetty describing all the ways in which they are incomplete and need to be redone.

In early August, she hears through the office grapevine that the dental appointments are over, at least for now. She drives by his apartment building on her way home from work. Its a gorgeous day, perfect for surfing, but his car is in its spot, and his curtains and blinds are all pulled tight. When she gets home, she dials his number, but stops before she presses send. She imagines him answering, but she can't even begin to imagine what she'd say after that. She has nothing to say now that can be said without tears - and it's not her place to cry. She's not the one who was hurt.

She leaves her phone on the kitchen counter and goes for a very long run.

That night, she dreams of finding him with the horrible metal bracket from the crime scene pictures still forcing his mouth open. When she pulls it loose, his whole jaw unhinges and she finds herself holding shards of bone and tooth, her hands too small to keep the pieces from spilling down onto his lap. Pieces of his face slip between her fingers and all the time his eyes are staring into hers, pleading, and all she can think is s_he has to put it all back in order_ so that the Russians won't know anyone has been here.

She's given a minor case to work with Callen, and then another one. Working closely with G feels odd, as though they're both slightly off balance. G talks like Sam is off on an ordinary vacation, as though his partner is simply taking the long break he might normally have taken on his wife's return from an extended assignment.

The rest of the office seems to have returned to normal operation. She hears conversations in the halls about dinner plans and dates. The linguistics team has their rotisserie league statistics on their bulletin board along with case notes. When she comes in each morning, the tailor and the wardrobe supervisor are comparing notes on back to school shopping.

When she enters Ops with Callen one morning, Nell and Eric are laughing at something, but Nell stops when she makes eye contact.

She texts again: "Looking forward to seeing you soon, partner." There is no reply.

Her mom calls again, and she makes excuses again. Her mom will ask about her partner, ask how he is and just what happened, and she doesn't want to answer those questions. "Well, Mom, they tied him to a chair and drilled out all his molars, so he's taking a little break." Her mother knows Deeks, at least a little, now, and she can't imagine telling her what happened. And she's never been able to lie to her mother. She knows she won't be able to lightly say "Oh, he's still on leave, there was an _incident_ back in May."

She definitely knows her mother will be able to tell something's wrong. Her mother has been making uncomfortably-accurate comments about partners and closeness. Her mother may have missed out on Kensi's twenties, but surely remembers 14 year old Kensi's responses to boys.

She can't tell her mother "I yelled at him and then he kissed me." Because her mother will ask "Have you kissed him back?" and she'll have to tell her "I got him hurt, and I think they may have broken him." And she might tell the truth: she might say "I can't think of his mouth without cringing. When I think about kissing him now, I think about bloody spit and a picture of a cordless drill bit in an evidence bag and I can't _breathe_ with the horror of it."

He told her that the memory of her smile got him through the worst moment of his life; the only memory of his smile she can summon is spattered with blood.

Her mother doesn't take no for an answer after her fourth call; she appears at Kensi's door that evening with dinner. And she doesn't bring takeout - she brings a reusable shopping bag full of food storage containers.

"I was in the neighborhood," she tells Kensi. "And since I didn't have plans, I thought I'd stop by."

The bag contains all the pieces of Kensi's favorite childhood dinner - Homemade burritos with her mother's special carnitas. They talk about nothing in particular while Julia clears a place on her daughter's kitchen counter to work and begins warming up fillings and opening toppings. Biting into her burrito, Kensi realizes this is the first homemade food she's had in weeks. It's exquisite, and she closes her eyes and actually sighs. Her mother, uncharacteristically, refrains from commenting.

It's not until after dinner that Julia tentatively begins. "Is everything okay, honey?"

"Why would you think it wasn't, Mom?" She can hear her own nonchalance slipping, and Julia is unconvinced. It only takes a few more questions and the story is spilling out. Not the whole story. Not the kiss. But the rest, to her chagrin.

"Did something happen to Marty?" her mom asks. "Every time I call, you tell me he's on leave - even when I don't ask about him."

And she tells her mother. She tells her mother about the trip to Iran, which she probably shouldn't mention, and about lost nuclear weapons, which she _really_ shouldn't mention. She describes leaving her partner alone without backup, which she doesn't want to talk about, and leaving her partner tied to a chair, which shames her to talk about. And then she tells Julia about leaving him in the emergency room at the hospital, which makes her feel queasy to talk about.

"Oh, honey," her mother says. "Oh, honey." She wraps her arms around her daughter and pulls her close. And words keep coming. Kensi presses her face into her mother's sternum and says the rest.

That she's not sure her partner is ever coming back. That she's afraid he might never be able to work with her again.

That she's afraid he blames her. Which would make sense because she blames herself, even if she doesn't know how any of it could have gone differently.

Later, after sitting quietly with her mother for a long while, the final pieces slip out.

"It's just .. teeth, mom. _Teeth._"

Julia remembers dentist visits with her small daughter. She remembers the household tumult over braces and retainers, and she nods.

"Why teeth, mom? Why? Of all the things people do to each other, why that?"

Her mother considers, then says quietly, "People respond more viscerally to hurting teeth, to hurting mouths, because it feels more _intimate_. It's not just the pain, I think. Forcing open someone's mouth — it invades their insides. It can make them feel small."

Kensi nods, feeling the truth of this.

After a moment, Julia goes on: "On a really basic level, teeth are your absolute last line of defense. Pushed to the limit and pinned, children and desperate people still bite. And sadists and sociopaths know that."

Her mother stops, takes a breath, and continues. "And really, there's only one way to get more invasive of someone's body."

She nods, and in her mind pieces fall into place as she remembers her partner's panicked reaction in the emergency room, as she realizes what the staring faces and reaching hands must have looked like to him.

"Have you talked to him?" Julia asks.

"Not since just after it happened. He didn't seem to want to see me. Or see anybody. I thought I'd give him space?"

"Honey, if there's one thing I know, its that if space takes too much time, it can become difficult to pick up the pieces. "

Time is passing.

Callen begins to anticipate Sam's return. He's been getting regular updates from Michelle, and has been invited to dinner several times.

Kensi clears out her inbox, fixes her reports, and asks Nell if she'd like to get lunch, her treat. Nell purses her lips and _looks_ at her far too long before agreeing. Kensi sets four alarms on her phone to remind her of the time and place.

They have a really nice time. Nell suggests they invite Rose next time, or Maggie from Munitions.

Time is passing.

She drives by his apartment, sees the windows are dark and knows he must be asleep or out of town. She selects his contact, presses "Send," and waits until his voicemail message plays before hanging up.

The next day, she leaves a message. "Hey, its Kensi. Give me a call?" She does the same the day after, and the day after that.

At the end of the summer, a college friends asks her to speak about Persian linguistics to a group of graduate students at NYU. She accepts, mostly for the chance to leave town. She stays with her friend, and together they tour lower Manhattan, though she avoids the new 9/11 museum.

In their wanderings around Soho and beyond, she sees a storefront that brings back a memory.

"Is that the place that makes cronuts?" she asks Ashley. "I've heard about that place. They make, like three hundred a day?"

Her friend laughs. Ashley thinks she works as a translator for ATF. "I don't want to make a cops and donuts joke," she says, "but yeah. If you wait in line, you can buy two per person if they've got any left. And they really are that good."

Ashley makes plenty more cops and donuts jokes as they're standing in line at a ridiculous hour the next morning, but when they get to the counter she buys her two as eagerly as anyone else. Kensi waits until they're back in the apartment to bite into hers, tastes the cream and sugar melting on her tongue, and remembers that long, infuriating stakeout, with her partner planning a fantasy vacation centered around famous bakeries. "Tour de Donut," he'd called it. "You wouldn't come snowboarding with me," he had said, "So I'm figuring I need a real Kensi-centric hook. Even Kensi Blye cannot resist the power of the cronut."

She wraps the second pastry up carefully and puts it in her carry-on for the return trip.

He still hasn't answered her calls, or her texts. So on her return to LA she drives by his apartment again and knocks, very quietly. When there is no reply from inside, she leaves the bag with the cronut in front of his door.

A plane crashes. Sam returns to work but her partner does not, and Nate appears from wherever Nate now usually is.

Sam is back and on his game, and she hasn't seen her partner in weeks - months. She misses him as she works with Sam and G. She misses the reassurance of his warmth at her shoulder, the tap on the back telling her to go or stay or break left or duck right. She misses the way he can flip from teasing fool to deadly professional in the space between two breaths. She still can't think of his mouth without a shudder. She can't think of kisses. But she misses his presence next to her in the car.

Driving home, after not catching the real bad guys, after watching Nell and Eric's awkward dance of mutual interest, after listening to Callen and Sam cautiously resuming their banter, she sees lights in the little store on the corner for the first time in months. Her partner had been the one to take her there for the first time, months and months ago now. "You'll love it," he had told her. You like fusion food, right? This is cross-cultural greasy spoon paradise." And it had been. And they'd stopped almost weekly for lunch, until one day not long before The Incident, they'd pulled up in the parking strip in front to find a notice of closure in the window. Now, it has reopened.

She doesn't know what to say to him, still. But a gift of food would break the ice. And news like this would provide a reason to visit. Before she can overthink her decision, she pulls into an open space just outside the restaurant door, goes in, and places their usual order. She wonders, while she waits for the food to be packaged, if she should have ordered differently, if he'll be able to eat what she brings, if she can watch him eat anything at all. But this is food, and food is safe. Food is how they take care of each other.

In the car, the smell of the bags makes her stomach rumble, and she's not sure if she's hungry or anxious. But she doesn't turn back and drive home. She drives to her partner's apartment.

Light is visible around the curtain across his window. At the door, she has a last crisis of uncertainty. The cronut bag is still there, and she picks it up and sees the pastry inside is untouched. She wonders if he has left town completely, except that she knows she overheard Nate talking to Hetty about a conversation with him. Undecided, she reaches for her phone and calls, and is nearly immediately sent to voicemail — but she sees the drawn curtain sway slightly, as though someone had moved on his sofa. She realizes that her partner is right there, feet away, so close that without the door between them they could probably touch, and this emboldens her so much she knocks at the door. As she waits, she holds the grease-stained bag up by her face, like a shield.

And he answers. He stands in the doorway, looking at her with slightly baffled surprise. He poses himself casually, confidently, but his unwashed hair and wrinkled, sweaty shirt betray him.

Her partner _smells_. His apartment smells. There are dirty dishes on the table next to the sofa, and as she crosses to sit down she sees more dishes in the sink and an overflowing recycling bin, and this is not right, _nothing_ about this is right. She feels a sudden rush of discomfort, a conviction that she's made a mistake in coming, that this can't work, that everything between them is irretrievably broken.

But she doesn't want that. _"It can be difficult to pick up the pieces," _her mother had said. She pushes the feeling back down, fills the space with words - simple words, everyday words. Not the big ones that make her want to run away, not words like "If I had that day to live over, I would have wrapped my hands into the front of your jacket and kissed you like I meant it." She needs to rebuild their partnership because she knows she can't lose it, and so she plays a part, takes her old familiar role. She eats fast, talks fast - about food, about the stupid movie she'd planned to watch tonight, and she can tell he's following her lead, doing the same thing.

She tries so hard not to stare at his mouth at first that she can't always look straight at him, but she realizes that he's beginning to really look at her again, at least in glimpses. He's meeting her eyes, with a smile, for the first time since he had opened his eyes in that auto body shop and she'd looked into his eyes and told him she couldn't set him free. For a moment, she feels satisfied with her success.

He has positioned himself on the sofa closer to her than necessary, and when she moves to get more comfortable, he leans in further. Despite the overgrown beard, he looks almost childishly vulnerable with his legs tucked up. She remembers that he had no one to be his next of kin when he was shot, and wonders how long it has been since he has had anyone to take care of him.

And then he falls asleep, head rolling to the side, closer to her. The pretense of normality between them disappears, but so does the tension. The leg against hers relaxes noticeably and his breathing loses the slight catch she hadn't noticed until she can no longer hear it. She lets herself look, closely, at his face, at his unbruised cheeks and the tiny line of a scar across the bridge of his nose. The stitches have healed so cleanly you have to search to find the lines that were so vivid and angry the last time she saw him.

She thinks about standing up and leaving him to sleep, but instead she eases herself down next to him, letting her shoulder and arm drop so close she can feel the warmth of him, reassuring and solid and alive. She looks, again, from his peacefully closed eyes to his mouth, and back. And she doesn't think about missing teeth, or crowns, or blood. She doesn't think about his eyes wide in hospital light staring past and around and anywhere but _at_ her. She almost wishes they would open, and see her looking, because maybe they can figure out that kissing thing after all.

Right here, right now, she's not sure, but she thinks they can be okay again. Whatever _okay_ means. "What happens next" she asks the silence.

"Its a love story."


End file.
